Question about Law School Decision

Shiboing_Boing
Tue, 19 Sep 2006 18:58:39 +0000

I think you overestimated the cost of UC law schools.

Realize that you do get residency after attending for one year.

So the total shoudl be 35k===>25k==>25k for your 3 years at Berkeley Law school with a similar debt load at the other UC’s.

In fact, many would be lawyers attend UCB for the cost savings alone in addition to the fact UCB is one of the very few top law schools on the west coast (with a number 1 ranking in the highest-grossing law specialty: patent law).

As such, you would only expect to be about 80k in hock for your UC law degree, which is quite a bargain for UCB or even UCLA.

Where did you get the 250k number from? To my knowledge, even Harvard law is like 60k a year now, not 83k, and I doubt it will rise by that much in the upcoming 2 years until graduation.

You could also do what sally suggested and just work in California for a year to get in-state status from the first year onward which would save you 10k but also defer your post-law school career by 1 year (and thus cost you more in the long run if you do well in law school).